Partners
by Nobody Apologist
Summary: A relationship of confusion can only be defined by a term with multiple definitions.


**AN: I wanted to write something for VanVen day that was short and simple and this popped out. I'm experimenting with my writing a lot more lately, so I'm sorry if anything seems kind of/really off.**

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><p>Ventus didn't know how to classify their relationship, and he was pretty sure that Vanitas didn't either. Ventus would sometimes ask other people what they thought of the two as, or others would ask him if their assumptions were correct, and no one could agree on one term. To some they were childhood friends who could insult each other the entire day without either of them doubting their friendship. To others they were romantically involved and wouldn't be able to last a day without each other. But they were also a former couple who'd gone through a nasty break up, rivals over someone else's affection, and simple acquaintances who just happened to run into each other a lot. Ventus sometimes wished it were the last situation since it would be the least complex relationship to have.<p>

He sighed and shifted his gaze from the ceiling to where Vanitas lay beside him. His face was buried in the pillow, and strands of his black hair stood up in all directions. The sheets were crumpled underneath him, and the blanket that covered both him and Ventus had slid halfway down his bare back when he'd last turned over nearly five minutes ago. Ventus turned to lie on his side and fully face his… partner of some sort.

Partners was the only label Ventus could really bring himself to use, and even then he wasn't entirely sure what was meant by it. He'd even opened a dictionary for the first time in years a few days ago in order to read the definition of it. Coworkers, romantic partners, sexual partners, dance partners, good friends, teammates; an abundance of meanings that he couldn't choose between. Although, they'd never really danced together, so he could safely cross that one off the list.

They'd been teammates before they were friends. They formed an unspoken agreement that, should either of them be assigned the role of a team captain in gym class, they would choose the other first. Ventus had never been sure as to how that had come about in the first place, but he suspected that it was Vanitas who had decided that it was a signed deal first back in third grade.

Coworkers came next when high school rolled around. Ventus had been assigned three different group projects on his seventeenth birthday, and had ended up with Vanitas as his partner for all of them. The third teacher had actually left it up to the student's choice, but Vanitas had marched over to Ventus' desk and argued that if they were stuck together for two other assignments, they might as well do this one together too. Ventus was secretly grateful for that since Vanitas was the only person in that class whom he'd spoken to more than once before.

The friendship itself didn't start until two in the morning on a Saturday night when the two of them had finally finished a ridiculously long presentation and had ordered pizza from a twenty four hour joint that shouldn't have classified as food, let alone pizza, in celebration. Ventus had packed their work safely away while Vanitas turned on a poorly written teen drama and cracked open his third energy drink of the night. He then went to retrieve the pizza from the front door shortly after Ventus had moved the four drained cans of the sickly sweet caffeine from the living room floor to the kitchen sink. He swiped a cold can of soda from the fridge before joining Vanitas and the pizza on the carpeted floor. They managed to watch the melodramatic acting over an easily solvable problem for about ten minutes with only the occasional groan or muttered criticism before the shrill ringing of the house phone drowned out the rejected love confession.

Vanitas stood and slurped the dangling string of melted cheese into his mouth before heading into the kitchen and interrupting the phone midring. Ventus didn't bother trying to listen in on what the conversation was about, and chomped through his third piece of bland tasting pizza instead. Vanitas returned soon afterwards and unceremoniously fell to the ground in order to resume his former position of crossed legs and slouched shoulders.

"Who calls your house at this hour?" Ventus asked.

"Parents worried that their son's throwing a wild party and breaking everything that can be broken in the process," Vanitas answered. "If I didn't pick up they'd assume I was asleep, and there's no way I could have answered in the middle of a party without them hearing it in the background or someone who's drunk off their ass not listening to me when I tell everyone to not answer the phone."

"What'd they say when you answered then?"

"Nothing much aside from a brief interrogation to make sure I was completely sober."

"So your bad boy reputation isn't a total lie?"

Vanitas turned away from the blinding screen and squinted at Ventus. "I have one of those?"

"Oh yeah," Ventus replied, reaching for his fourth piece of pizza. "People are torn between swooning over you and despising you all thanks to a couple of rumours."

"Where do you fall on that?"

Ventus had always been puzzled by how Vanitas had asked him that instead of what the rumours were exactly. He didn't begin to mull over the implications of the question or his answer to it - which he couldn't even remember - until they'd moved into another definition of partners.

Sexual came before romantic, if he was being honest with himself. Vanitas had invited him to one of his "wild parties", much to the chagrin of Terra and Aqua - whose simply defined relationship made Ventus incredibly envious of them. Ventus decided that there was no harm in letting his curiosity take the reins and was greeted at the door by an already tipsy Demyx, despite the fact that the party had only officially started half an hour earlier. Ventus had immediately latched on to Vanitas once he'd found him, which Vanitas seemed to have no problem with and yet also be annoyed by at the same time. He'd always been hard to read.

Ventus' memory also drew a blank on who'd first shoved a drink in his hands. Axel was the most likely candidate, but Ventus also remembered seeing him on the other side of the room after taking his first sip of alcohol. Ventus didn't remember much after that moment either, aside from his overly enthusiastic participation in a horribly set up drinking game and the incident that complicated everything that came afterwards.

Ventus had always been a firm believer in the idea of fate, and this had become a great source of comfort over the past few weeks; even if Ventus hadn't kissed Vanitas in a drunken stupor that night, this undefinable relationship they shared would have started as a result of something else. If there was one thing Ventus was entirely sure of when it came to him and Vanitas it was the fact that their relationship would be nearly impossible to describe no matter the context of it.

But the kiss they'd shared that night was the event that sparked the many sleepless hours Ventus now experienced and there was no plausible way to argue against it.

Ventus had been slowly growing aware of his surroundings ever since midnight, but exhaustion was tainting his vision by the time the digital clock on the microwave told him that it was nearly three in the morning. He stumbled out into the living room and nearly tripped over an unconscious teenager - who he recognized as a student from a different school - but was stabilized by Vanitas' hands sliding under his arms and pulling him backwards by an inch or two. He slumped against Vanitas' chest and his boneless body vibrated with the sound of Vanitas' voice.

"Tired?"

Ventus nodded.

"Think you can handle the stairs?"

Ventus shook his head.

"Well then, I guess you're stuck on the floor and not in one of the nice beds."

Ventus whined and his body shook again in response to Vanitas' chuckling.

"Come on, asshole," Vanitas said. He lifted Ventus from his slouched position, slid an arm around his waist, and turned him to face the stairs that definitely weren't as steep the last time he was here. "Up you go."

Halfway up the stairs it occurred to Ventus that Vanitas could have easily carried him up the stairs and was just being cruel in making him walk up the stairs with barely any help whatsoever. But the arm that was still wrapped around him, and the fingers that brushed against the top of his hips, and a general lack of energy convinced him to keep his mouth shut.

A sharp turn to the left led them to a closed door, which Vanitas quietly opened. He leaned into the room and took his time looking around the room with his fingers lightly drumming against Ventus' hips as he did so. Once the room was deemed to be clear of any of the other party guests, the arm against Ventus' back gave him a small shove into the room. Its brief absence made Ventus feel like he was about to fall over, but it quickly returned and guided him to sit on the bed that was backed into the corner.

He sat on top of the black duvet, and looked up at Vanitas. Ventus had come to the conclusion over the years that Vanitas had asked him something along the lines of whether or not he remembered how to get under the covers. Ventus had been too busy watching Vanitas' lips move at the time to really listen to what he was saying, so Ventus shrugged in response to the questioning look he received and got a snicker in return.

He decided that he liked Vanitas' hands a lot that night. Something about them appealed to him in his drunken state that somehow also applied to his sober state on later occasions. Whatever it was, he enjoyed feeling them against his back, his arms, his legs, and pretty much anywhere they could reach. Or he'd at least assumed he did as helping someone who's on the verge of passing out get under a blanket didn't involve touching in too many places.

He wasn't sure when the kiss happened exactly. It might have been before Vanitas had begun to maneuver him around, or it may have even been after he'd gotten the blanket up to his chin. All he knew was that he initiated it himself and that it was better than everything others had used to describe the experience, and yet it paled in comparison to the kisses they'd shared later. Vanitas had left the room soon after and Ventus couldn't bring himself to ask how he'd felt about it when the two of them were fully sober again. In fact, he still hadn't asked Vanitas, to this day, if he'd been sober the entire night.

They were both technically sober the second time, but the hopeless romantic in Ventus had always thought of it as the two of them being drunk off each other instead. It was a class trip, a retreat into an incredibly low tech camp area where the class was supposed to bond and grow as people in a last hurrah before heading into their last year of high school. Vanitas had a tendency to disappear during the various activities they were expected to participate in, and began to drag Ventus along with him by the second night. They'd sprinted up the rickety staircase that led to the observatory while the rest of their classmates burned marshmallows over a small fire. Vanitas named more constellations that night than Ventus even cared to remember, but somewhere along the way their conversation sputtered off and they were left to glance over at each other and pay unsubtle attention to the other's lips. Ventus opened his to ask about the alcohol laced kiss they'd never spoken of, but Vanitas quickly leaned in and placed his mouth over Ventus', effectively cutting him off before a single word could even come out of his mouth.

They'd kissed in so many ways in what felt like mere minutes. Short, long, closed lips, tongues, cheeks, necks; anything uncovered from the chest up was subjected to the other's lips at least once. Vanitas' lips were travelling up and down Ventus' neck when Ventus noticed their classmates returning to the main building.

The root of the problem was obvious to Ventus, looking back. They never spoke about those kisses. They never really talked with each other about any of them. They went unmentioned despite the large increase in how many were shared. Ventus had always believed that it wasn't supposed to work that way, but he didn't dare bring it up to anyone out of embarrassment.

Sex was only marginally better in the sense that they'd at least talked about it a few times. They first fucked in Vanitas' bed, under that black duvet, the July after they graduated. Ventus couldn't remember what they'd been talking about before, but Vanitas had eventually asked if he wanted to have sex and Ventus had agreed after minimum thought towards any further complications it could throw into the already cloudy mix. They repeated nearly the exact same process the night they'd moved into their shared university dorm - which Ventus was still amazed by. One of them always asked and the other always agreed. But asking to have sex didn't really count as talking about it, or what it meant for their relationship. It didn't make up for the unasked and unanswered questions about all of the kissing the two did with each other in the run of a day. It didn't -

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Ventus was snapped out of his thoughts by the low growl that came from a disgruntled looking Vanitas. His eyes slowly blinked and the red lines from pressing his face into the pillow stood out against his pale skin. He'd turned to face Ventus, and pulled the blue blanket up to his shoulders.

Ventus took a deep breath. "What are we, Vanitas?"

Vanitas glared at him. "Human beings, as far as I know."

"No. I mean… what is this?" Ventus gestured toward the space between them.

"Air? Sheets? A pillow? Not entirely sure what you're pointing at."

"What's our relationship?"

Vanitas visibly tensed. "Can we talk about that in the morning?"

"We both know we won't."

Vanitas rolled over onto his back and focused his gaze on the somewhat worrying crack in the ceiling. "What do you think it is, then?"

"Why do you think I'm asking?"

They were both silent for a brief moment. Ventus shifted to lie on his back as well before asking, "What do you think it is?"

"Probably the exact opposite of whatever you think it is," Vanitas sighed.

Ventus didn't like the train of thought that statement was taking him on, so he stopped it by saying, "Partners."

Vanitas turned his head and gave him the look he always did when he was confused by something Ventus had said or done; squinted eyes, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other, teeth pressed tightly together.

Ventus turned his head to mirror Vanitas. "That's the only word I can apply to it."

Vanitas sighed. "Go to sleep, Ven."

Ventus kept his face blank as he turned to face away from Vanitas. Surprisingly, sleep came to him pretty quickly once he actually sought it out. But as he descended into the land of dreams and simplistic relationships, Vanitas lay awake and pondered over what exactly Ventus had meant by "partners".


End file.
